


And You Try Chasing Your Dreams

by Princex_N



Series: mint and wool sweater and vinyl car seat [3]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Arguing, Autism, Autistic Blue, Autistic Gansey, Autistic Persephone, Clothing, Fluff, Gansey thinks he doesn't deserve nice things but he Does, Gen, Mentions of past child abuse, Self-Acceptance, Shopping, internalized ableism, more like a slightly forced attempt at it, sensory issues, through ABA therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-08
Updated: 2016-05-08
Packaged: 2018-06-07 02:30:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6781765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princex_N/pseuds/Princex_N
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"You just look so goddamn stiff and uncomfortable all the time. Those clothes look like hell, you need to buy something more comfortable, Jesus Christ."</em>
</p><hr/><p>Blue tries to convince Gansey that he should get comfortable clothes, he doesn't take the suggestion well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this was supposed to be short and fluff but it turned into a long angsty mess, whoops.  
> i'll probably have the next chapters posted by tomorrow.

Blue has been staring at him for the past several minutes, eyes narrowed in concentration, and Gansey doesn't know what to make of it. 

He tries not to fidget, keeping his hands still on the page he had been reading as he asks, "Is there a problem?"

Blue's eyes narrow further, "Are you seriously comfortable in that?" She demands, raising a hand to gesture vaguely at his person. 

He doesn't understand. 

"I-what?" He asks, his head tilted in confusion. 

She makes a noise of frustration, "Those clothes, are you seriously telling me that you're comfortable in that?"

Gansey glances down at his clothes, polo shirt, shorts, boat shoes. The same thing that he always wears. He tells Blue this, and she rolls her eyes. 

"That's not what I asked." She tells him, which is true, but the answer doesn't particularly change. This is what he's always worn, routine is comfortable. Is that the same?

"They're comfortable enough," is what he winds up telling her, "Where did this come from?"

"You just look so goddamn stiff and uncomfortable all the time. Those clothes look like hell, you need to buy something more comfortable, Jesus Christ."

"They're fine." Gansey replies shortly. This conversation is giving him a weird feeling in his stomach that he doesn't really know how to identify. He doesn't want to talk about this anymore. 

"It's not a bad thing, you know?" Blue says, and when Gansey looks at her, her face is weirdly soft. 

"What?" Gansey asks, a mix of curious and cautious, because that wasn't what he'd been expecting. 

"Being autistic." Blue says, tone matter-of-fact and with un-Blue-like gentleness. Gansey's stomach twists painfully and his heart seizes in his chest, panic rising up to choke him. How had she known? Had someone told her? Who knew now, besides his family? Ronan and Adam, they didn't seem like the type to tell other people, but how else had she known? Had...

"No one told me, or anything like that." Blue interrupts the chaos that Gansey's brain is falling into. "I can just tell." 

That is not reassuring.  _How_ had she known? He's been fucking up, this is way too many people to know, his parents hadn't wanted people to  _know_ , and now so many people do. 

"Gansey," he looks up, wonders if the panic is showing on his face, he tries to make eye contact because that's what people  _do_ , but Blue carefully avoids it. "I'm autistic too."

Shock causes the cacophony of anxiety in Gansey's mind to come to a startling halt. 

Blue continues, "Do you think there's something wrong with me?"

"No." He replies, he doesn't have to think about it at all. Of course there is nothing wrong with her, how could there be?

"Then why do you think that there's something wrong with you?"

"Because I'm different." He hadn't meant to speak out loud. His face feels hot. 

"You're not really." Blue says, "You don't have to be perfect just because your family has a ton of money. You're human too." 

_'You're human too'_ , what a concept. Gansey wants to protest, it doesn't matter. His family's money meant that he'd lived the easiest, and it meant that there was a reputation he had to uphold, and for such an easy life, wasn't it worth it? He never had to worry about money, his parents were both alive, and neither of them had ever hit him. Out of all of his friends, Gansey had suffered the least, how could he possibly deserve  _more_ than that?

"It doesn't matter." Gansey forces out, throat tight and head spinning. "I have enough, I don't need more."

Blue's mouth twists into a frown. She's upset, and Gansey doesn't understand why. He would have thought that she would agree with him. Didn't she always realize how  _much_ his family's money had granted him? Hadn't she hated him, once, because of his money? What had changed? Gansey didn't understand. 

She bites the inside of her cheek, chewing at it as she frowns at him, and Gansey wants to leave this conversation behind, but can't think of the words to excuse himself from it. 

"Bathroom." Is what he manages, and Blue nods and Gansey escapes, locking himself inside and leaning up against the wall and trying to breathe evenly, his hands stiff fists at his side. 

When he goes back downstairs, Blue is gone. 


	2. Blue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tbh the only reason I split this fic up into chapters is because of this POV change...

Blue gets home and immediately goes to find Persephone, her fingers tapping irregular beats against each other in a vague attempt to curb her leftover anger.

"He's such an idiot!" Blue bursts out, her hands flying out as if to mime the explosion of her frustration. Persephone barely looks up from her knitting, though she does turn down her music. Blue continues, "He's so damn stubborn, it's annoying."

Persephone opens her mouth to speak, but Blue doesn't register it, or ignores it, most likely a combination of both. "He's so damn rich, he could buy fucking anything but he won't buy himself some goddamn comfortable clothes."

"He was hurt." Persephone says, before Blue can interrupt her again, "He's just doing what he was taught. You can't blame  _him_ for that."

Blue doesn't bother asking how Persephone knows that, but she still wants to call the statement into question. Who would bother? Why did it matter so much? She can't understand it. Can't comprehend the logic behind it. Blue was autistic, and it had never been a problem in her family. How could it have been such a big one for Gansey's? Did they realize how much they'd hurt him? Did they care? Fuck, do they even  _realize_ what they'd done? Blue can't decide which would be worse, that they know and did it willingly, or that they don't and think that they're doing the right thing.

"If you want to help, you have to keep trying." Persephone continues, jolting Blue out of her thoughts. Then she puts down her knitting and _looks_ at Blue, which means she's serious. "But be careful. He's struggling. Don't make it worse."

Blue grits her teeth and wants to ask how being  _nice_ to someone could be overwhelming. But when she thinks back to the absolutely gutted look on Gansey's face and realizes that Gansey would absolutely be overwhelmed by kindness when it comes to this, and that pisses her off. 

She wants to pay Gansey's parents a visit and give them a piece of her mind. 

Not that it would help. The damage is done, but it would help  _her_ to feel better. 

She shakes her head briefly, to hear how her hair rustles to help center herself. Then she nods, "Okay," she says aloud, and Persephone nods back and picks up her knitting and turns her music back up, and Blue makes sure to close the door quietly on her way out. 

Tomorrow she is taking Gansey shopping. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to clarify that I don't think that Gansey's parents are bad people, and I'm not trying to portray them as such. The problem with organizations like Autism Speaks is that they paint an absolutely falsely horrific picture of autism, and so a lot of parents who wind up sending their kids to abusive therapies really _do_ believe that they're doing their kids a favor, that their child is benefiting from this kind of "therapy". That getting rid of autistic traits and making their child act and appear neurotypical will be better for them in the long run, without realizing how damaging it is, without realizing that they're causing their child extreme amounts of anxiety and taking away their coping mechanisms and their right to say "no", and that really sucks.  
> [this article](http://unstrangemind.com/aba/) really does a good job of summing it up, and if you're unfamiliar with ABA therapy and what it is, I really encourage you to read it, it does a really excellent job of addressing what ABA therapy is, what it does, and why it's fucking bullshit, but I'll also warn that it is very unsettling and can be potentially triggering. So tread carefully.


	3. Gansey

Gansey was not expecting it when Blue shows up at the door the next day. 

She had left the day before upset and Blue has been the type of person to take a while to calm down. Not the type to show up the day after an argument (?), looking not at all angry or upset. 

"I need you to drive me somewhere." She says, rubbing the hem of her light gray sweater beneath her fingers, rising slightly on her toes. 

"Alright." Gansey replies easily, grabbing his keys and closing the door behind him, because he may be confused, but he never minds having an excuse to drive somewhere, he likes it. 

Blue doesn't say much, won't even say where she wants Gansey to take her, instead only offering directions as they come. Gansey listens to the rattle of the Pig's engine and tries not to feel anxious because he doesn't know what the hell is going on. 

They wind up in front of a small store, and Blue says, "Come on," as she gets out of the car. Gansey follows hesitantly. 

A bell rings brightly as they walk in, the store is  _full_ of racks and shelves of clothing and a single counter with a girl standing behind it. 

"Hey Blue," she says, "Back so soon?"

Blue laughs lightly, "You know me." She says, which causes the other girl to laugh. 

Gansey has no idea what's going on. 

Blue makes no attempt to abate this confusion as she leads Gansey to the back of the store. There are more racks and shelves here, stacked practically up to the ceiling, they don't seem to be organized at all. 

"Pick something." Blue says suddenly, breaking the odd silence of the store. 

"What?" Gansey looks away from the clothes to look at her, she's staring at him with the weird soft expression from yesterday, but her face is set more determinedly. 

"Pick something," she repeats, "Do you need help with it?"

Gansey looks between her and the clothes on the shelves, he feels like he's missing something. "Help with what?" he asks, trying and rather failing to not feel stupid. 

"You're going to get some goddamn comfortable clothes, and it's not going to be a big deal, it's just going to happen."

Gansey can feel himself scowling, but Blue pushes on before he can open his mouth to protest. "If it  _is_ going to be a big deal, then I'll pay for them, and that will make it a gift, and you can't turn that down."

Gansey feels something soften. He's not going to get out of this, though he can't fathom why Blue is so set on this. "I can't ask you to pay for them," he says, turning away from her and back to the clothes, "What am I looking for here?"

He catches her smile out of the corner of his eye, "What you feel the most comfortable in." She says, which makes nothing clearer. There are so  _many_ clothes here, how is he going to choose anything? "Do you prefer tighter clothes? Or looser ones?"

Gansey doesn't quite like this, something like guilt is heavy in his stomach, but he presses through it, thinking back to clothing in the past. "Looser." He says finally, tight clothes are suffocating and restraining. 

"Okay," she says, and leads him over to a more specific areas, she indicates a shelf. "Pick something off of this, it doesn't matter what color, unless there's a color that hurts your eyes or something, just touch it and pick what feels right."

"Is this how you shop?" Gansey asks, amused. 

"It's how I've always bought clothes." Blue replies, shrugging her shoulders and flashing a grin, "Now start feeling."

Gansey does, he brushes his fingers over the sleeves of the shirts, occasionally using the flat of his palm or his wrist for a better investigation. Some fabrics are terrible, some are okay, some are good. It has been ages, possibly years, since he's done something like this and he is undoubtedly self-conscious about it, but Blue's hands are flapping at her sides and while Gansey knows that  _he_ could never do anything like that, it does make him feel better.

He reaches the end of the rack and goes back for a shirt with only a brief moment of hesitation. It's a light gray and blue almost marbled pattern, it's large and has a small white pocket on the front, the fabric is soft, almost worn. 

"Cool." Blue says, "Maybe your fashion sense isn't as hopeless as I thought." 

Gansey wants to point out that he'd chosen the shirt off of its feel, not its look, but he's pretty sure the statement had been a joke, so he just smiles. 

"Now you're gonna pick some pants, and then we can be done, if you want." 

She leads him over to a nearby shelf. "Pants or shorts?" 

He doesn't have to think too hard on that one. "Shorts."

She points to a shelf and he kneels down to investigate the fabrics without being prompted to. When he finds one he likes, he pulls the shorts out to find they're much shorter than he's used to. 

Gansey glances back at Blue, still holding up the black shorts, but she only shrugs. "If you'll wear them, buy them. You don't have to wear them outside of Monmouth or anything."

She has a point and the shorts are soft, so he stands with them in hand and something like a nod. 

"Is that all you want?"

"It's fine." Gansey says, _'more than enough'_ he doesn't. 

He's expecting an argument, but doesn't get one. Blue simply nods and heads off towards the counter. 

Gansey drops Blue off at her house, and heads back to Monmouth with clothes he's not sure he'll ever wear.

* * *

 

Gansey wears the clothes.

It's the middle of the afternoon and he's trying to work on homework, but he keeps getting distracted by the way his shirt moves and the way these pants fit. 

And he remembers the clothes he bought with Blue and thinks _'it can't hurt'._

So he changes, stripping off the uncomfortable school uniform and pulling on the shirt and shorts that have been sitting on his bed since he bought them. 

The shirt is baggy, but soft where it touches him, and the sleeves are stitched rolled up and don't interfere with his range of motion. The shorts are more fitted, but soft and still comfortable, coming to a stop around mid-thigh. 

It's nice. It's comfortable.  _"Blue may have been right"_ , he thinks to himself, and Ronan comes out of his room and chokes at the sight of Gansey, who can't quite stop himself from laughing and hadn't felt like it anyway. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ronan is a gay nerd.


	4. Blue

Blue is sitting on her bed, sewing a patch onto one of her jackets when Calla starts pounding on the door to tell her that the phone has rung for her. 

Her initial reaction, as she puts everything to the side and pauses her music, is irritation. She sets aside specific times for specific things, and she hates being interrupted. 

But since it's Gansey, Blue makes a vague attempt to curb some of her frustration before she answers the phone, just to be polite. 

"What?" She asks, tilting her head to hold the phone between her ear and her shoulder as she starts to shift through the drawers in the kitchen. She'd meant to come down to get a marker out of them earlier but she kept putting it off, this is as good of an excuse as any to get it done before she forgets again. 

"Blue?" He says, and his voice is so weirdly hesitant that she pauses in what she's doing and holds the phone with her hands again. 

"Yeah? Is everything okay?" 

"Oh, yes." There's a pause and Blue can hear some shuffling on the other line. She's starting to get over the brief pang of anxiety and is quickly being pushed back into irritation. She's about to open her mouth to tell him to hurry up and say what he needs to say when he finally speaks up. "The store you took me to." He says, the sentence fragment is clipped, "Do you... I don't suppose that you'd mind coming with me again?"

The words come out in a rush, and it takes Blue a couple of seconds to turn them over in her mind before they actually start to make sense. "Oh." She says, momentarily a little speechless, "Oh, yeah. Definitely. No problem." 

Gansey breathes out a little sigh of relief. "Fantastic." He says, and then hangs up. 

That startles Blue a bit, but she doesn't actually mind. She's more pleased about the fact that not only had he apparently actually tried on the clothes that they'd bought the week before, but she had been  _right_ and it made enough of a difference that he's willing to go again. 

Blue lets out a little whoop of happiness and flaps her hands all the way back up to her room. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> coming up next: spd!noah teaches gansey the Good Stims 

**Author's Note:**

> [my tumblr](http://www.princex-n.tumblr.com)


End file.
